Yesterday I caught a rare glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror. What I was struck by was quite simply that the jeans I was wearing, despite my having bought them from the internet, fit reasonably OK. Not great, not any kind of rear-end-showcasing situation, but they are unambiguously give or take the right size. Not to mention a material and denim shade I’d been looking for for ages. All I could think, when I realized I’d bought jeans online that fit, was how much of my life I’d spent in dressing rooms, trying on pair after pair of jeans, looking for the right ones. Such emotion went into this, with every style, size, and fit having some sort of significance. And they really did need to be tried on, or so I thought. The knowledge of one’s own dimensions (even fluctuating ones, apparently) that comes with age, paired with the impossibility of trying anything on in person and the settling that goes with this, and yes, fine, a generous-cut style, combined to mean that an item I would have thought unpurchaseable online worked out great. (Everlane jeans, the ones formerly called “summer” and now unavailable.)
But it would be nice, going shopping. Properly, where you can try stuff on, and go get a coffee and pastry at the end. Maybe at Ceci Cela or Maman in Soho, or Nadège in Toronto, or absolutely anywhere in Paris. Pre-pandemic, no masks.
I’d like to go clothes-shopping. What a thing to admit! It is embarrassing on all the levels. Vapid, as one should crave something more intellectual, social, noble. Also oblivious: surely I’m someone whose size is found in ordinary shops, and whose demographics mean not being followed around stores, suspected of theft. (I am, I am! Except insofar as in Toronto, stores are equal-opportunity in treating all customers like shoplifters. ‘Do you want me to start a dressing room for you?’ when you haven’t even so much as touched a garment.)
My recent as in past-year attempts at in-person shopping have been nothing if not frugal. I took a trip to Dundas West used clothing stores with baby in carrier, back when the pandemic was a bit less pandemicy this fall, and it turns out that if you can’t try things on (I did try on a No 6 clog boot, which was a no-go), the most you can do is enjoy the experience of being in VSP Consignment. After some browsing I think I sat on a bench or planter or something and had an iced latte and chocolate croissant in that awkward way one does when a baby’s strapped on and everything has to be eaten outside.
Some stand-out dressing room experiences from before-times include:
-The time I was a stall over from a cast member of “Designing Women” at the Aritzia on Bloor.
-When a crowd of Hasidic boys were sneaking peeks at a Barneys Warehouse Sale, where the space itself served as dressing room, as is/was the case at New York sample sales.
-Consignment store on Cherche-Midi, where I tried on EVERYTHING and bought not nothing.
-Betsey Johnson on Madison circa 1995. Lots of crushed velvet.
-Eaton Centre Uniqlo, last of the pre-pandemic trying-ons.
It’s not about hating online shopping so much as about it being shopping minus enjoyment. Pared down to a chore. The supposed dopamine click of hitting “purchase” isn’t a thing. It’s more the knowledge that something will eventually arrive that’s not quite right, but that is also too much of a hassle to return. I want to go into a store and look. Like the clothes shop down the street from my older child’s daycare. It opens at noon and seems tricky to get into with a stroller and is there even still indoor shopping in this lockdown and basically all I know is, from the website, they sell some interesting-looking hair clips and some far too expensive if covetable Park Slope-y dresses. (Think Bird.) Will I ever see the inside of that shop? I guess if I made it a priority, which I have not. I would at this point settle for a situation where there wasn’t an amount of snow on the sidewalk making it impossible to go to the fruit stand.
And I don’t even need anything! I’m home with my second baby, so I have clothes in every size from slimmer than my usual to 9 months pregnant. Nothing in my lifestyle makes it necessary for me to dress up, or even to put on something other than what I slept in (though I am a fan of doing that).
Trying stuff on was never my favorite part, often my least, and generally avoided altogether. Into adulthood it brought back memories of middle school shopping outings with friends with narrower thighs and heftier budgets. Stuff often doesn’t look right, doesn’t close. In winter there are all those layers, which in the era of dressing two small children (and one small dog) for snow does not sound especially leisurely. And to go shopping did not necessarily mean to come home with anything. But the decision to take things to the dressing room meant meaning business. That’s what I want at the moment.